Chapter 3
Ash, the Stupid Drunk, Part II
Ash don’t know how long he stared at those evil claws flexing at him.
Strange with screams and cries ringing out everywhere of Mandy's fellow lycan kind, and Ash's own actually, getting cut down. The gurgles and moans of dying lycan and humans.
The bitter metallic stink getting so thick in the air it was like trying to breath blood and terror. The wet thumps onto the cobble street echoing across the cramped stone houses. All so loud and random no sane person could mistake them from anything but the fall of the mortally wounded during battle.
The bittersweet aftertaste of too much ale, vodka, and wines, of too many spices and fruity flavors, all dulled what normally would of made his whole body cringe. His insides roared with righteous fire to destroy these darkling monsters slaughtering his fellow party goers.
Ruining his first chance in a long time to get wyrmed too.
Wait, that last thought really shouldn’t be there.
Another sign Ash was way too drunk to fight properly.
Forget the lycan.
Go more than a few houses down and he'd get lost in the maze of zigzagging streets, get mugged by a stone wall he didn’t see, and collapse in the most embarrassing position since he graduated his apprenticeship and ended up naked on the front stairs of the Paladin's Academy the next day.
Long story.
No time now.
If this gorgeous heart attack of a murderous tigress wasn’t just as stupidly drunk as Ash … well, then again, he somehow in his current state was still able to appreciate the stunningly fine hip, chest, and waist ratios of a wyrming bloodthirsty catgirl darkling. With wyrming cat fur growing out of every inch of her skin.
And appreciate she had a lovely citrus smell.
Some blend of orange and lemon he really, really shouldn’t be caring about as much as he did.
The fact this Mandy simply flexed her claws at him, the evil glare from her poison ivy eyes, her pointy white fangs gleaming in the lamppost light –
Yet hadn’t simply sliced his throat open.
Ash was pretty impressed with her restraint.
Amber would say go for it. Strange that this catgirls’s kind destroyed the girl of his dreams yet his first reaction to them now was, especially to a pretty lycan was, well, less than proper, fiery-veined vengeance.
For a Paladin, especially.
But a chance to wyrm a girl was a chance to wyrm a girl.
Even if she was a darkling whose very race was breed for vicious murder and brutal combat. Existed solely to exterminate mankind. Trim down other races for bonus points. The added feature of fur hiding combined nice body builds matching human ones, especially the feet turning human during the fur hiding, it helped them blend in with the very races they sought to annihilate.
The fact they stood glaring at each other …
Had Ash trusted his arms more than his wobbly legs, maybe he could of sliced her throat open right there. Or cut through a vital spot. The magic sharpness of his saber would doom her, slicing through claw or limb, unless her speed allowed her to dodge –
A speed well beyond amazing.
Simply drawing Felix’s attention would do too. He was like a tornado of iron brawn cutting down lycan. Like a tornado of wind and hail cutting down rover camps.
Okay, rovers hated when people said that.
But it wasn’t Ash's fault they set of a bunch of ply wood tents in the middle of vast regions of tall swaying grasses called Tornado Plains during the nice and warm and rainy time called Tornado Season and then wondered why so many tornados struck them.
Something involving a god or goddess or something, last time Ash checked.
Probably one dressed in their baggy drab clothes and heckling worshippers to spare a coin – and not the ten the divine asspicker just pickpocketed you for.
“Well?!” growled Mandy. Her claws freezing in a sinister curled up gesture.
And Penny, his devoted nutcase of a bodyguard, now a few dozen feet away, was still engrossed in slaughtering as many lycan as her new nemesis rival, Felix the War God.
The cuts over her body already being to heal.
While he hadn’t received a scratch yet.
Never mind Felix was the foremost Champion of this generation and many several prior.
That these poor murderous darklings were feeling was his pent-up fury at the wizard forbidding him from running up north to face down a ratling’s grand challenge at the Storm Killer. One that would define his generation and many to come.
“Uhm, what?” Ash asked. Then stumbled out the rest. “Was the question?”
His throat was as good as slit.
But she actually barked out a laugh.
“So you do know the proper method of a purren challenge,” she said. Her grin said he was a mouse worth playing with alive.
So far.
“I,” she said, “Mandy Ivy of the Clawheart Clan, do challenge you …”
His heart hit a wall.
Another test?
But his drunk mouth spat out his name before his brain could stop it.
“Ash La Pushka,” he said.
His real name.
With the very well known and very unique surname of the one and only Earth Wizard.
The glint in the catgirl’s poison ivy eyes became clear enough to shout that she connected the bucket to the water.
If Ashe survived, his dad would kill him.
No.
The old bag of wrinkles would just laugh at his face. Call him wet behind the ears.
Felix would be the one to kill Ash.
Followed by a thorough stabbing by Connie, his other Paladin partner. She was currently trapped guarding the old bag of magical wrinkled while he did his scholarly thing in his secret home away from home.
Mandy’s claws retracted. Chilling Ash's blood colder than a blizzard high up above tree level, up in the mountain passes Paladins sometimes trained in during their later apprentice years.
Her grim expression even more serious.
And her words more solemn.
“To a drinking contest for disrespecting my clan and insulting my clan sister, after taking her life,” she said, “I demand the loser to our match serve and obey the winner unconditionally and loyally for the rest of their life.”
“I … uhm,” Ash said. His mouth not happy with his mind blanking at this very moment for no good reason other than too much alcohol. “Well …”
“Just say yes!” she snapped.
“Yes,” he said.
Before Ash could think about it.
Before he noticed Felix and Penny had almost wiped out the nearby lycan. Were positioning themselves to chase down the darklings hidden by, and cutting down, the screaming panicked crowds in the distance.
Both too focused, too confident on Ash's competence while too drunk, for either to notice his rather pathetic predicament.
When Felix glanced at him.
Rolled his eyes.
And preceded to ignore him.
Ah, Ash was crow bait.
That sign technically meant Felix approved Ash's rather desperately idiotic “plan” to defeat Mandy by alcohol rather than the common methods normal sane sober fighters used.
That Felix recognized this crazy plan might reveal more info on the true enemy behind this attack, uhm, well. Maybe it might give the good guys a chance to learn a few of the many deadly secrets lycans refused to speak of. You know, despite centuries of interrogators from every kingdom torturing them to the worst deaths possible at some point or another, Ash might happen to capture the one lycan that would break.
Uh huh.
Which was why out of all the murderous darklings in the world, the professionals feared the lycan the most.
Out of all the darklings in the world, they were the only ones who choose always the worst agonizing deaths rather than betray either their clan, honor, or oaths.
And their coming of age oath was to exterminate the human race.